


A Thing of the Past

by faithlethalhane



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 00:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9467771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithlethalhane/pseuds/faithlethalhane
Summary: After the power outages left the world in dark in the year 2645, there was nothing to stop the outbreak from spreading. Set in the Make Me Someone New universe, far in the future, in the POV of a girl who meets a tired, still very much alive, Carmilla Karnstein.





	

It’s just another day looking for food when she happens.

And you mean exactly that. She _happens_.

One minute you are minding your own business, keeping quiet and stealthy with your party trying to get to the closest grocery store when suddenly there are dozens of zombies around.

You get separated from the group in your haste for escape, and you are stuck hiding in an alley, weaponless, praying a zombie doesn’t stumble into you.

And then she just… _appears_. Out of nowhere, she just jumps into view, swinging a bat at a few zombies like they’re giant tee balls ready for the homerun.

You are just so _enthralled_ you don’t even see the zombie close to you until it makes a sound and you swear you jump out of your skin that your shriek is so loud.

At least, it was loud enough for _her_ to hear. Her head whips toward you, and for a single split second, your eyes meet and she looks absolutely shell shocked. For one fleeting second she stands, bat held up mid-swing, before she acts.

She abandons the current zombie she had been beating to a pulp to rush over and do the same to the one by you, but the steady stream of zombies she had _previously_ been whacking at slowly start making their way over too.

Frantically, you search the alley for something to fight with and are lucky enough to come up with a discarded piece of metal pipe.

“Watch out!” you call, chucking the pipe at the zombie about to take a chunk out of her turned back.

It connects with his body enough to send him staggering back, and she spins toward the sound, swinging as she does.

And the madness continues, zombie by zombie until they are all dead, she is covered in blood, and you are breathing so heavily you think you might just burst.

“Jesus were you trying to get yourself killed?” you ask, trying to catch your breath.

She laughs. You don’t quite see what’s funny.

You try again. “There were _ten_ of them, you could have gotten scratched or bit or-”

She chuckles again, a little more bitterly this time. “Guess zombies are too stupid to know not to beat a dead horse, huh?” She grins wider this time, and you think you missed the punchline.

Her smile fades. “God, you’re just another boring angst-o-matic, aren’t you? And I thought I was dark.”

She sighs and shrugs, shaking some blood off the end of her bat. “Point is, you’re fine and I’m fine, so I’ll just be on my way.”

You blink.

“On your way?”

She furrows her brows, glancing around. “On my way, yeah. Unless you…do you want something? Am I supposed to thank you?”

You know you should be offended, but you’re just confused and surprised.

“There’s no one else?”

She shakes her head.

“You’re not someone’s scout or messenger?”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “No, nothing like that.”

“You’re just…by yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to shatter your fabric of reality, darling. Just wanted to leave you in peace.”

“Don’t you want to come back to our camp?”

“Are you offering?”

You frown. _Were_ you offering?

No. That’s just usually what people ask. For shelter. Food. Supplies.

“No.”

She laughs, less bitter and more genuine now. “Would you like me to request so you can decline?”

This girl is so strange, so…out of her body as she looks you over. Like she _knows_ you, knows this conversation. It’s a bit unnerving.

“Come back to camp.”

It spills out of your mouth as recklessly as its intent: to throw her off.

In that regard, you succeed. She looks taken aback for a moment, a flash of surprise and uncertainty in her eyes before they are yet again smug and laughing and knowing.

“I thought you told me you weren’t offering.”

Shit, she was right. Internally you cringe, but externally, you steel your expression. To sell this, you had to believe it as much as she would.

“I’m not offering. I’m telling.”

Her face is as unreadable as you are trying to make yours.

“For a night,” she agrees solemnly. “Just for a night.”

…

You return to camp with her in tow, and everyone stares. Everyone. You knew how out of character it was. You, the paranoid, to _willingly_ bring someone back to base. But it was just…something about her.

“A good whack to the skull will fix all of those stuck eyes,” she mutters loud enough for everyone to hear.

Immediately, they all look away, pretending to be busy. You swallow down a smirk, leaving her for a moment to give a report to Claire of everything that had occurred. When you exit the tent, you see her approach the fire pit in the center of the base.

She drops her bag at her feet and sits down, rubbing her hands together and holding them by the flames.

You watch her carefully. She doesn’t look around or inspect her surroundings. She doesn’t even seem to notice as a few people slowly approach and sit in other spots about the fire. She just sits and watches it, rubbing her hands and pressing them closer to the flames, wiggling her fingers as if to feel them.

You let the moment sink in, let yourself get lost in her. You missed your opportunity before with all the chaos. 

She’s pretty, you’ll give her that. Smooth skin and dark hair, dark brown eyes and small hands. She was quite the vision sitting there so still, the curve of her cheeks and the slant of her jaw accentuated by the harsh glow of the fire. She looked both exactly like your typical teenage girl and completely in her own league above them. Camouflaged and yet completely _not_ at all. 

Her nails are painted black, and she sports more than a few leather bracelets. Her clothes are average. Maybe a little dated, but nothing significant. Just old-fashioned skinny jeans and a good pair of boots, a few layers of shirts beneath a scratched and faded leather jacket. 

About her neck is something strange, however. It looks like old technology. Something from at least two decades ago, maybe three or four. It’s just one simple piece hung on a plain simple chain. The object is oblong, one end a metal rectangle of sorts with two square holes in it, the main body just black plastic. It’s fairly small, about the length of your thumb, but it’s just so…chunky to be _real_ tech.

When you look back at her face, she is looking back, the glow of the fire in her eyes as she watches you intently. You smile uncertainly, and she does the same. (you think hers was more convincing than yours)

…

One night turns to two, turns to ten.

Nobody seems to mind that she’s around. Honestly, nobody even seems to notice. She sleeps during the day and sits quietly at night. There is one more mouth to feed, but somehow your food stock just seems to keep growing.

There is more meat being dried and salted than you have ever remembered, but the hunting party always seems to come back with the same as they always do. A few rabbits here, a duck there. 

Yet here you were, elbows deep trying to package the cured meat that had finished the drying process.

You watch her carefully over the next week, but her routine seems exactly the same. She sleeps while everyone works, sits by the fire at night and helps Mara with her basket weaving. She holds the old woman’s shaking hands until they steady enough to continue working.

And then she sits awake while everyone slowly starts dispersing for the night. Sometimes she offers to take watch, but while nobody minds her, nobody quite trusts her either.

There is one night, however, where you lose track of her for a few moments. And then you spot her at the edge of the camp before she ducks into the woods. 

Your curiosity tells you to follow. Your survival instinct tells you to wait it out; she will have to return sometime.

Return she does, with a deer hiked over her shoulders. She holds the legs in front of her like a child holds backpack straps. The buck had to be at least twice her weight, if not more. Yet effortlessly, _soundlessly_ she lifts it up over her shoulders and onto the ground in front of her. She begins carving and cleaning it, quickly and efficiently as you’d ever seen. Never falters, never hesitates. She wraps the meat in a cloth and hoists it up, balancing as best she can until she disappears between the drying racks.

She disposes of the carcass next, and then finally sits down in front of the dying fire with a bucket of water. At first you swear you’re seeing things, but from this angle you _swore_ you saw blood on her face. And not just a few flecks. But smears of it, across her lips and chin.

But you blink and she is splashing water up at her cheeks and there is nothing else to see but her pretty face and sparkling hair where the moonlight catches the water droplets. 

Why was she so damn pretty?

…

Everyone else starts noticing the surplus of meat. It’s when the questions start. When the rumors do too.

She dodges answering like a pro. Jokes like there’s no tomorrow, and with a flash of her charismatic smile and quick wit with her low, enticing voice, everyone forgets the question they had even asked her.

You catch yourself falling for that a lot.

She almost seems like a person after a while. A real person with a real personality with stories she tells sometimes that people just _eat up_. She only tells them in passing, but it’s like the whole world stops (or at least the whole camp) for her to recount one little tale of one little passing event.

In the middle of one of those tales, you have the courage to speak up with a new question, a nagging one.

“Where did you get that necklace?”

Something cracks inside her. Her smile immediately breaks to a hard expression, and the laugh in her eye dulls. She looks at you for a long moment before answering.

“Found it. Just looks cool.”

It’s a believable enough lie. But that’s exactly what it was. A lie.

For she closes up, stops talking or joking. Not just for the rest of the night, but for the next few _weeks_. She just…exists. Even when the hoards begin to show up, she just helps pack up camp and carries her fair share as the group begins to trek. 

…

A month goes by and she doesn’t change.

She is cold and quiet. She holds an umbrella during the day, frown etched deep into her face like a permanent grouch. The umbrella is tattered, a few small holes through the top allowing speckles of light along one side of her face. Casey makes fun of her for it once. She throws an axe frighteningly close to his ear. He doesn’t really mention it ever again.

You think it strange that she is so attached to the umbrella. Your theories border on supernatural sometimes, but she shatters those theories when she drops her bag and sprints for a little girl who wandered too close to a contorted bridge railing. She hadn’t burst into flames. She merely looked fatigued and grumpy as she returned to the group with a babbling toddler trapped behind her crossed arms, the girl’s feet dangling uselessly until she was set back down.

She had reflexes no one else had.

To say she contributes to the group’s social dynamic is far from true, however. She doesn’t talk much anymore. And the few sentences out of her mouth are dry with wit, and sharper than necessary sometimes.

“Hey lackwit, you ever hear of manners?”

“Bats have better vision than you, brat, I’ll keep watch tonight."

And your personal favorite:

“Whistle again and the next high pitched sound out of you won’t be so musical.”

Finally, it is too much silence and too much guilt that you just can’t _keep_ ignoring her anymore. Though she certainly seems to be good at ignoring you too.

“Hey,” you mumble as you sit down next to her on the car hood.

She looks at you tiredly before looking back to the horizon. “Hey.”

“Look, I’m…I’m sorry if I crossed a line, I was just curious?”

She smiles sadly, but does not look at you again. “Have you really been holding onto that apology for this long?”

You bite your lip. You feel a burning in your cheeks you hadn’t felt in years. “Maybe.”

“God,” she exhales, shaking her head and laughing bitterly. “You really are just like her.”

“Like who?”

She clears her throat before speaking. “A girl I used to know.”

Her eyes gloss over and she wipes quickly at them before any tears actually fall. 

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly. “I-I think we all lost somebody from all this.”

She opens her mouth, and for a moment it looks like she is going to correct you, but she just exhales sharply through her nose in what should have been a laugh. “Yeah.”

The silence weighs heavy on you as she stares off in the distance. She just looks so broken and sad, but hardened like it wasn’t fresh or new. It looked nothing like loss did on any of your other group members.

Reaching over slowly, you put your hand atop hers. Reflexively, she jumps, but manages to keep her hand in contact with yours. She stares at you hard. She slowly turns her hand over, opening her fingers to allow yours to slip between.

It feels warm and familiar.

But she is staring at you so intently you cannot quite appreciate the moment.

“Careful. Look at a girl like that and she might get a complex,” you murmur. 

She doesn’t say anything else. Just looks back up at the stars and holds your hand.

…

Not only is she deftly good at hunting, she turns out to be good at, well, everything. She carries two bags instead of one, sometimes carries a child or two when they start to get tired. She just sticks the handle of her umbrella into her backpack and holds them in the shade with her. She has one hell of an aim, too. She doesn’t seem to eat very often, and on top of it all, she doesn’t seem to understand the concept of fear.

But even no fear doesn’t hold up against a hoard. 

The group holes up in an apartment building on the outskirts of a small town. You set a trip wire with tin cans and bells at the top of the stairs. The first few nights are good. Everyone sleeps a little better with a roof over their heads and cushions and blankets.

She sits by the window a lot, head against the wall as she stares up at the sky. She always keeps the window propped open, breathing deep and careful breaths of fresh air when she thinks no one is looking.

Apparently the indoors wasn’t for her.

You sit next to her one night, and she pretends not to even notice at first.

“You scared of small spaces?”

She shrugs a shoulder, but does not deny it.

“Feel like you’re suffocating?”

She doesn’t move a muscle, keeping her eyes locked on the sky.

“You’re allowed to talk about it, you know,” you prod gently.

“It would be in everyone’s best interest if I stayed right here,” she offered after a few long moments of silence.

“Are you claustrophobic?”

She smiles for a fleeting second. “That’s part of it, yes.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Scared of the dark.”

You frown, glancing about the room. It wasn’t _that_ dark. A few candles flickered in various corners, a small battery powered lantern in the center of the room.

“It’s darker outside sometimes.”

“Even so,” she says quietly. “If I ever seem…off, I would stay away.”

You furrow your brow, about to respond when the faint clatter of metal catches your attention. She heard it too.

You get to work rustling everyone awake while she packs as much as she can in everyone’s bags. A knock on the apartment door starts, slow and erratic, turning from useless noise to a hard banging steadily as more people start whispering and moving.

“Fire escape,” she whispers, and you shake your head.

“We won’t make it in the dark.”

She runs to the door and leans her weight on it, absorbing the blows and muffling the sound.

“You will,” she whispers more harshly this time.

Something in her eyes is earnest and you aren’t quite sure you want to argue with her as her body jerks with every hit against the door.

It starts to splinter, and she spreads her arms flat across the width of the door frame.

“ _Go,”_ she hisses, but you are rooted there as the wood beside her head cracks, hands busting through.

Somewhere, a growl echoes, and fear spreads across your skin like ice, raising all your hair on end.

You draw your weapon and steady it to fire, but she shakes her head roughly, even as more cracks appear, more grabbing hands and low groans.

They scratch at her arms and neck and face, hungry and mechanic, but her eyes are cold and tired. Fearless, not to be confused with brave. She holds that door until every last person is out on the fire escape except for you. Until her arms are scratched and bloody.  Until one of them grabs hold of her necklace, and then something changes.

It rips from around her neck, and her eyes change from apathetic to angry. Their usual dark and piercing brown are alight with something gold and unforgiving.

You hear another growl, and she turns. The door almost gives, but she recatches it with her palms. You do not realize what she is doing until she shoves hard enough on the door to crack it from its hinges, flattening the four or five zombies on the other side. A few of them are sandwiched between the remnents of the door and the opposing hallway wall. The rest, however, merely fell on the ground and are stumbling to their feet.

“Where are you, you bastard stomach-for-brains?” she shouts so loud her voice is hoarse and scratched. The walls tremble slightly, and the growl is louder this time, deep and throaty.

She grinds her teeth and rips the door away, hitting a zombie to her right with it so hard it cracks apart. She grabs one by the throat, shoving the other two zombies staggering away. Where her nails dig into its throat, there is blood, and with her other hand she yanks its hand up into view.

Nothing.

She gnashes her teeth, and this time you see it is _her_ growling. She pulls it away from the wall only to slam it back harder, knocking its head clean through the drywall.

She spins on her heels, and something is definitely off. Her eyes are flaring angrily, her hands balled in clenched and ready fists. The zombie closest to her reaches out with both of its empty hands, and she lands a punch so hard on its jaw you’re sure you heard it cracking as it crumples to the floor.

“Hey _dead-head_ get your rotting ass over here,” she taunts angrily.

The two remaining zombies lunge at her, and this time she finds her mark. You know it for her eyes lock unwavering on it, a smirk curled on her lips. “Can’t cheat death forever,” she mutters. 

The zombie to her right lunges, and she blocks it with her forearm at the price of its teeth sinking into flesh. 

You shriek involuntarily, clapping your hand over your mouth as she snaps her head in your direction.

“Laura, _go_ ,” she shouts before focusing back on the fight.

All you can do is take a single step toward the fire escape. You can’t look away. You don’t even register the wrong name that had fallen from her lips. Just the fight, just the horror.

She uses the arm still being chomped on as her leverage, jerking it hard enough that the zombie flies across the hall. With her left hand, she grabs the necklace still clutched in the last zombie’s hand. With her right, she unsheathes a hunting knife from her belt, impaling its chest so hard the knife lodges into the opposing wall, skewering the zombie in place.

She pulls the necklace free, grinning as she steps closer to it, a breath away from its wildly snapping teeth.

“Enjoy,” she snarls, “you’ll be there until you rot.”

She pockets the necklace as she heads back into the room, grabbing you by the jacket and dragging you to the fire escape. 

“Y-you’re _hurt_ ,” you babble out, shoving her off of you even as she fits you through the window. 

“I’ll be fine,” she mutters, deftly slipping through the window and pulling you to your feet before not so gently shoving you down the stairs.

“You were _bit_ , and you are _not_ going back with the group.”

“Will you stop talking for five minutes of your life and just _move_ ,” she mutters, unperturbed by your apparently idle threats. 

You stumble down the last few bits of the fire escape, watching as she leaps from it gracefully and casually, scanning the area.

“ _Stay back_ ,” you try more forcefully.

She just rolls her eyes. “There are more coming, alright? We need to move.”

“How can you _know that?!”_ you shout. “There’s _nothing around_!”

“I can hear them and you need to keep your voice down. The group headed west. If we just follow the road-”

In a moment of bravery, you shove her back with a firm hand to her chest. “I’ll go but you are going the opposite way-”

“Fine.” 

She says it before you can even get all the words out.

“Go.”

She shoves you one last time, and you hesitantly backpedal in the right direction before turning your back on her.

You feel lonely and empty on that run back to the group. Even when you catch up, it feels like there is a vacuum between you and them. They ask you what happened, and you aren’t exactly sure what to tell them.

You keep it simple. It’s dark and they’re scared. They don’t need more to worry about.

The walk is treacherous and loud, innumerable moans and footsteps in the dark in seemingly every direction.

But every once in a while, you hear a growl, see a flash of black just inside the treeline of the woods at the side of the road. You wait until it is daylight and a rudimentary camp had been set up before addressing it. Everyone is sleeping, and you stand at the edge of the clearing, leaning against a tree as you peer into the woods.

“I know you’re there.”

“Sorry.”

The voice comes from behind you, and you whirl around with a yelp. She laughs halfheartedly. 

“It’s not funny!” you protest. “You’re endangering all of them.”

She tilts her head and looks you over. “So you say.”

She pulls her sleeve back to reveal and neatly healed half-moon series of teeth mark scars. “It’ll be gone tomorrow.”

You stare at it blankly. The wounds you’d seen in the past were always yellow with infection, bloody and gnarled and unmistakably death-like in their appearance. 

Slowly, you reach out and brush your fingers across it.

She retracts her arm slightly, but catches herself.

“What are you?”

She grins. “I think you know.”

“I _thought_ I knew,” you correct with a laugh. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

With a twitch of her lips, she pulls her smile back. “Well then I’ll leave it at this. Can’t kill something already dead.”

It’s enough affirmation for you.

But it’s not the only question you had.

“What’s so goddamn important about that necklace?”

She raises her eyebrows, then drops them again, sighing. “That’s fair.”

She slips it off her neck and extends it to you, and you take it gingerly, remembering exactly what happened to the last person who held it. She digs through her bag and retrieves what looks like a hundred year old laptop.

“Jesus,” you breathe, “that’s like a _relic_.”

She chuckles. “If you think that’s a relic, I don’t think you want to see my other possessions.”

She plugs in a solar battery and the screen comes to life. She types in a few things and extends her hand to you. Slowly, you press the necklace into her palm, and she sticks the metal end into a slot on the side of the computer.

You watch in awe as a video pops up, of a girl who looks… _strikingly_ similar to you. She hands the laptop to you and gives a sad smile. “You might want to get comfortable.”

She turns to leave, and you frown. “Aren’t you going to stay and watch?”

She looks back at you, and for a moment she holds your gaze, but slowly her eyes drift down to the face on the screen. Her eyes sadden, and she blinks away a glossiness from them before looking back at you. “I’m saving it to watch whenever I’m ready.”

“That’s not now?”

Her jaw trembles and she bites her lip. “Give it another hundred years and we’ll see.”

She walks away, and you drop down on the ground, cradling the laptop in your lap. You press play.

“ _Silas University in picturesque Styria…”_


End file.
